Relevance of Marxist Theory in Understanding Modern Societies Essay Example

beliefs. These groups are called subcultures. Eisenstaedt says that subcultures are formed in order to smooth the transition between childhood and adulthood. Adolescents feel a loss of status or have powerlessness in the family and so turn to their peers for support. Marshall says that subcultures are formed due to the stereotyping of teenagers by the media.

Davis & Moore say that certain skills and talents are needed for certain roles in society and only a limited number of people have these skills, e.g. doctors/lawyers, etc. A critique of Davis & Moore, Melvin M. Tumin says that doctors and lawyers being more important than farm labourers is a matter of opinion. This theory goes against the theory of Marxism, as in modern society, more people stand up against theories which say how we must think & behave – especially subcultures. Once they have a minority group which consistently disagrees with the majority, it will eventually have an effect.

Walby, Paterman & Wolf (1990) says that gender role socialisation is determined by society’s distinction between private & public place. Private place is where the mother brings up the family in the home and public place is where the father goes to work to bring in money for the family. Glendenning & Millar believe that society has experienced a feminisation during the past 20 years. Women have more opportunities and the gap has decreased from the 80% wages of men’s hourly wage for women.

In modern societies there have been changes. According to Peter Townsend this is due to the Industrialisation. These changes go against the Marxist theory that people in higher classes have

greater power to control people of lower classes. This is because social mobility has occurred. Social mobility is the movement from one class to another. Movement can be upwards or downwards.

Due to aspects such as social mobility, feminism, subcultures and disagreement Marxism no longer has any relevance of helping understand modern societies. This can be criticised in saying that in some ways, Marxism can help understand, e.g. there is still a conflict between classes, the owners of production have power over the workers who earn much less than they earn, but all of this is changing. It has changed considerably in the last 20 years and is still changing as more opportunities are given to women and people of lower classes. Ken Roberts found that due to technology & overseas cheaper competition there are more higher paid, less manual jobs offered to lower class people, for examples hop assistants rather than coal mining.